Tires
The Monday after, Mom drove us to the tire shop in Clyde, and I rode along, and she parked the Ranger exactly straight between the lines without being told.
The man at the counter looked at the old tires and whistled. “Ma’am, these are about done,” he said. “You’ve got cords showing on the inside of that front one.”
“I know it,” Mom said. “My son-in-law said they would get me to summer. I would rather not find out.”
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She bought four new tires, good ones, and an alignment and a new set of wiper blades, and she paid out of Darrell’s envelope in hundred-dollar bills. There was money left over and she put it back in the envelope without a word.
When we asked her later what she meant to do with the rest, she said it was the Ranger’s money and it would stay with the Ranger, for brakes or a battery or whatever the truck needed next.
Darrell had come to Sunday dinner the day before. He sat at the end of the table and did not say much, and he ate two helpings of Mom’s roast and carried his plate to the sink, and on his way out he shook Bodie’s hand.
Aunt Fern made it over from Abilene on her new hip, with her walker in the back of her neighbor’s car. She sat next to Mom and they held hands under the table during the blessing, the way they have since they were girls.
The mail
The new title came in the mail three weeks later, on a Tuesday. Mom called me at the office as soon as she got it out of the box.
“It’s here,” she said. “Arlette Pinson. Owner. It says it right there. My name and nobody else’s.”
“Put it somewhere safe, Mom.”
“I am putting it in my purse,” she said.
“Mom, that’s not safe. What if you lose your purse?”
“I have never lost my purse in seventy-seven years,” she said. “I lost a husband and I lost another husband and I lost a car. I am not losing my purse.”
I did not argue. You do not argue with a woman like that, and I have never once won when I tried.
She still has the seat all the way forward, every last notch. She still sits up tall to see over the wheel and laughs about it if you mention it. She drives to the store on Thursdays and to her heart doctor once a month and to Aunt Fern’s on Sunday afternoons.
She signals every single turn. She waves at everybody on Main, including Darrell, who waves back now without being asked twice.
The title is in Mom’s purse, in her own name.